Janice Elaine Voss (October 8, 1956 – February 6, 2012) was an Americanengineer and a NASAastronaut. She flew in space five times, jointly holding the record for American women.[2] Voss died on February 6, 2012, from breast cancer.[3][4]

Voss was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1990 and flew as a mission specialist on missions STS-57 (1993), STS-63 (1995), STS-83 (1997), STS-94 (1997) and STS-99 (2000).[6][7] All of her flights included another female astronaut as well.[8]

During her career as an astronaut, she participated in the first Shuttle rendezvous with the Mir space station on STS-63: it flew around the station, testing communications and inflight manoeuvres for later missions, but did not actually dock. As an STS-99 crew member on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, she and her fellow crew members worked continuously in shifts to produce what was at the time the most accurate digital topographical map of the Earth.[3]

From October 2004 to November 2007, she was Science Director for NASA's Kepler Space Observatory, an Earth-orbiting satellite designed to find Earth-like extrasolar planets in nearby solar systems. It was launched in March 2009 and was still operational at the time of her death at age 55 from breast cancer.